Michael Joyce, the author of the first hypertext fiction, afternoon, a story, authored this, his first web hypertext, in 1996. Twelve Blue is an HTML hypertext that makes use of frames and image-maps. Although simple from a technical standpoint, the work tells a complex and enigmatic story of memory, desire, lust, truth, and consequences.
Author description: A drowning, a murder, a friendship, three or four love affairs, a boy and a girl, two girls and their mothers, two mothers and their lovers, a daughter and her father, a father and his lover, seven women, three men, twelve months, twelve threads, eight hours, eight waves, one river, a quilt, a song, twelve interwoven stories, a thousand memories, Twelve Blue explores the way our lives — like the web itself or a year, a day, a memory, or a river — form patterns of interlocking, multiple, and recurrent surfaces.
Instructions: Once past the first page, click the threads displayed on the left or hyperlinked words to progress the narrative.
Previous publication: Twelve Blue was published by Postmodern Culture and Eastgate Systems, http://www.eastgate.com, (co-published), 1996 and 1997.
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.